“Risk Taking:
Necessary For Medical Practice Business
Profitability”

If you value reaching your greatest
potential
as a doctor, this is how you do it.

Risk-taking is a measure of our
adaptability and creativity. It has
everything to do with creating a
highly profitable medical practice.
It has everything to do with your
private practice survival.

You consciously or
unconsciously
confront risks daily. You either
adapt your thinking to modifying
those risks when you recognize them,
or you adjust to the risk and modify
your behavior to live
with them.

Naturally we first think about
avoiding risks of any nature, an
instinctual process that provides
you with an immediate sense of
security. The problem is that many
risks to our lives and personal self
are not recognized or predictable.
To protect ourselves we engage our
minds in patterns of looking for
potential risks that we otherwise
wouldn’t have noticed.

We pay attention to possible,
probable, or actual risks because we
intend to do something about
them… usually. Ignoring them only
postpones the inevitable
consequences of living with the
probabilities of misfortune
following you around like a shadow.
Add that to your
list of stresses if you have
masochistic tendencies.

With these ideas in mind, we are
down to dealing with the risk
factors and their benefits or
destructive potential. Whether
intentional or not, we eventually
make the necessary changes to avoid
risk factors we perceive as
dangerous and
evaluate those that
have a potential of resulting
in
a
benefit.

The options available for
accomplishing this are selected by
emotion and rationalized by reason.
Any choice we make among those risk
options either impedes or enhances
the objective we have in mind so
there’s a lot of mental analysis
involved.

The choices we make measures our
degree of success and failure in
everything from marriage to career
status... even how much beer you can
drink and still remain upright.

What
are some of your risk-facing
options?

Recognize
risks
but
ignore
them—the
“what-the-hell”
attitude

Select some
risks and do something
about the ones
you care about
making
adjustments
for

Spend
your
life
in
isolation
to
try
to
avoid
any
risks
at
all

Believe
your
faith
protects
you
always,
so
no
need
for
worry

Assume your
life is predestined, so
risks are of no consequence... your fate is already decided
no
matter
what

Pretend
the
risks
you
notice
won’t
ever
affect
you...
such as gambling

Rely on
statistics that tell you
that there is only one
chance in 10,000 of a
certain risk happening
to
you

Face your
risks and fears head-on
every day... resting
on hope and your
self-confidence in your personal
capabilities for
overcoming them,
what
ever
they
are

Risks force our mind to
consider the
advantages and disadvantages of
proceeding on a course beyond the
obvious chance of injury,
damage
or
loss.

There’s another risk dimension of
opportunity, believe it or not, that
lies beyond what we usually
determine to be our personal risk
limitations.

The limits that we presently feel
comfortable with (our comfort zone)
may even contain more risk potential
than in the environment outside our
comfort zone.
It’s just that we
often don’t recognize it. The fear
of what could happen holds us
hostage. If you’re crippled by the
fear of an increased “assumed risk”
being
present outside your comfort
zone,
get a grip!

The fact that we most often think
additional risks as being more of a
threat than we are already facing
without stepping out of our comfort
zone, in no way guarantees for us
that there’s a significant greater
risk outside the box we are
in. Is
it better to stay as we are, or take
a chance on improving our situation
in spite of a potential risk taking
venture into
the unknown?

Risks are cognitive warnings that
something bad might happen if you
push your actions beyond a certain
point, because you have had no
experience with that circumstance to
show you it’s
safe to proceed.

Your fundamental freedom for
maximizing your professional
potential and creativeness is
possible only when you’re confident
you can handle the risks you
undertake. It’s been shown that the
mind functions at a much higher
level of creativeness and productive
thought patterns outside your
comfort zone.

How does one
measure the severity of risk
factors?

Risks don’t predict the outcome of
any risk-taking choice. It’s left to
us to move ahead
with caution.

The greatest mistake we make is to
consider risks primarily as threats
rather
than opportunities. So, here
we are with our knickers in a twist
trying to fight
off the emotional
right brain and soothe the logical
left brain at the same time.

Fear

is the dominant measurement device
we use to judge the consequence of
risks. The greater the fear of what
we “think” will be the result of
taking a risk,
the greater we
perceive the risk to be. Fear causes
us to be imprisoned by the
foolishness of “pretend” or
“guessing.”

Our move into a situation where we
have never been creates fear to a
variable degree. The amount depends
on your belief in what you are
capable of accomplishing… a matter
of your self-esteem.

Fear of the unknown makes a risk
feel like a threat. We have that
fairy-dust
belief based on what we
have seen and heard about those who
have ended
up on the short end of
the stick by taking risks. We dwell
on the fate of risk
losers rather
than the risk winners.
Why is that?

Why don’t we accept what happens
to
risk-winners who have overcome the
fears and their perceived threats
successfully. The fear of failure,
fear of
disgrace, fear of
disappointing family expectations,
fear of your own capabilities, and
fear of loss of everything you have
created for yourself, prevents us
from upgrading our professional
careers and lifestyle? We normally
refer to such
“over comers”
as entrepreneurs.

Discipline
is a profound measuring
device for
judging risk. The greater a
person’s
discipline has become over their
lives, the less the risk potential
appears to be… and actually is.

Discipline over one’s own life
includes such things as setting
goals and achieving them, never
being satisfied with their level of
accomplishment, using their time
productively, making plans that are
followed to the end, and ultimately,
maintaining the perception of
failure as just another stepping
stone towards success.

Discipline had to be present for
anyone to have graduated from
medical school,
but you know that.
You have it but may not know how to
use it to the best advantage. You
may be very disciplined at
controlling your productive use of
your time, but may not realize you
have not done so well with
establishing
medical practice goals
beyond medical school and
reaching them.

Ask yourself right now, “Am I
disappointed with my medical
practice or
professional career
today? Have I reached my highest
level of skills and medical
knowledge I previously anticipated
at this point in my career? Am I
sure that
I’ve reached my maximum
potential in my medical professional
career? Am I convinced that I have
the discipline and control to accept
certain calculated
risks in order to
reach the place in my career where I
originally
expected to be?”

Don’t tell me you can’t discipline
yourself to do all these things,
because I know you have the desire
and capability to do so. The
difficulty is, “You don’t know
what
you don’t know.”

If you don’t allow your mind to help
you (while outside your mental
comfort
zone), you lose. Just try to
imagine how much useful information
and knowledge your mind has
suppressed, yet still retains, that
you could really use now.

Accountability
is not only a virtue, but also a
means of measuring risk
potential.
Taking responsibility for everything
that happens to you in your life
is
key to your ultimate potential in
your professional career. The
greater your accountability, the
less severe the
risk potential.

Your level or degree of
accountability is inversely
proportional to your level of risk acceptance.

Accountability
provides
you with
the
ability
to think
more
decisively,
make
more
reasonable
and
acceptable
decisions,
and
create
the most
advantageous
outcomes
from any
risk
taken.
These
qualities
are best
exemplified
by war
heroes
who
instantly
are able
to put
aside
all
risks by
understanding
their
own
accountability
to
others.
I
discovered
that
fact in
combat
in
Vietnam
while
flying
on
helicopter
medevac missions as a
flight
surgeon.

Physicians and other professional
medical providers are accountable to
their patients, to their peers, and
to their families, among others.
Because of the
impact of your
accountability for your medical
practice performance, most
doctors
are quite willing to push their
limits of skills and medical
knowledge
(step out of their box) to
be of more value to their patients
and medical profession.

Overcoming the risks we’re talking
about here, leads to extraordinary
accomplishments that become result
multipliers. You might end up rich
even
when you didn’t plan to.

When you’re accountable, risk taking
surpasses conventional wisdom. You
see
and understand risk factors more
clearly. It enables you to more
easily reduce
the risks involved.
You are less likely to end up out on
the end of a limb. This brings up
the next topic of adjusting to risk
taking… a fresh eyes view of your
thoughts concerning risks.

How to change
your thinking about
medical practice
risk factors

Every medical professional becomes
involved in reducing risks to
themselves and their patients. Here,
I want to focus on the business
risks that doctors face today
in
this world of economic crisis, while
the members of congress hide in the
pucker-brush.

What I’m most concerned with are the
causative factors leading doctors to
avoid the business and marketing
aspects of their practices. I’m
convinced that a large portion of
the causes can be attributed to the
way doctors think about risk.

An example of doctors who are able
to feel comfortable enough to
practice medicine, while claiming
objective amnesia regarding the
risks, reveals the
power of mental
repression.

Isn’t it remarkable that every
OB-Gyn doctor hasn’t quit practice
as a result of
an incredibly high
risk of medical malpractice,
especially with obstetrics? I
say… let the midwives take the risk
instead. The remarkable reduction in
malpractice risks to all midwives
who are directly involved with the
same
trauma factors as doctors’
face, rarely are sued for such a
situation. Go figure.

A
doctor’s pugnacious attitude towards
their risks of possibly losing
everything,
is commendable… but
foolish when you consider their
alternatives. In my
case, it was
necessary for me to be neck-wrestled
to the ground by my wife
before I
was able to understand the stress I
had put myself under all those
years… what an idiot I was!

Yet OB doctors plod along continuing
to pay the outrageous malpractice
premiums, worrying about when (not
if) the next patient will sue them,
and knowing that one bad medical
judgment, or treatment, or surgical
procedure
can terminate their
practice with the loss of
everything. Often,
it also includes
loss of their family.

How is it
possible to rationalize
that kind of risk taking?

Let me
list a few possible reasons...

·Fear the risk of changing their
specialty is a higher
risk than
continuing on as
they are

·Fear of the risk of quitting medical
practice is higher
than just
hangin-in
there for a
few more
years

·Belief that if
they accept only
patients of very low
risk, it will
not
financially support keeping
their
practice open

·
Belief they are not qualified for
doing anything
else as a career
but
what they have already
trained for

·
Belief they can’t afford to re-train
in another
specialty

·
Belief the medical system is about
to eliminate
private medical
practice, so why change
anything
yet

·
Belief the cost of transforming
their medical
practice to a highly
efficient business machine
is too
risky

·
Belief they are
stuck with accepting
their
mediocre private
practice
income as the best
they can do or
expect

·
Belief that as an employee they are
safe from all
those
risk factors...
risks
never go
away.

The amount of risk involved in each
of these situations is a matter of
individual perception that has no
basis in fact, statistics, or
overall outcomes for any doctor
in
any specialty. Fear freezes us in
place with few exceptions.

It seems that doctors who are
earning a large income from their
practices pay much less attention to
risk factors than those who are
barely
making
it financially.

Sure, rich doctors have a far larger
financial cushion which allows them
to
have less concern about risk
taking. During my years in private
practice 1973
to 1994, I knew an
invasive cardiologist making over
$600,000 a year, and a
gastroenterologist earning about the
same amount. Risks to them were
considered essentially
insignificant.

Wouldn’t that circumstance cause
less affluent doctors to step out of
their
comfort zone at least long
enough to disregard risks that they
previously
believed to be too
drastic? Apparently not.

In
this section of discussion about
taking risks in medical practice
it
seems that a few key lessons stand
out...

Although this tongue-in-cheek
summary of lessons are to some
degree a bit believable, while they
at the same time point out that each
of us respond to risks in different
ways. It takes a go-round with your
“inner self” to learn to deal with
risks. How you deal with risks
continues to change throughout your
professional life, depending on the
triggers that send you off into a
different phase of belief.

Hard facts to remember

Fact
#1:
You
get
nowhere
without
taking
risks.

Fact
#2:
Taking
calculated
risks
keeps
us
in
the
recoverable
zone.

Fact
#3:
Ways
to
reduce
risk
and
create
improvement
are
not counter
productive.

Fact #4:
Fear creates more failures
in medical
practice than all other factors combined.

Fact #5:
Every doctor has the
in-born capacity to
find their full potential by learning to adapt
to practicing in
an environment where
change is
constantly occurring and risk-taking
is prevalent.

What
happens when you combine risk taking
with medical practice business
profitability?

The answer is… nothing! At
least not until you’re completely
convinced that
you need to do what
it takes to make it all happen. Even
then, nothing happens
to your
medical practice business until you
take action and implement what
needs
to be done.

Obviously, you will have to trample
rough-shod over your fearful
uncertainty, deprive yourself of the
panty-waist comfort of inertia,
buggy-whip your
intentions, and
recycle your mental mindset.

The thermal noise you hear is
nothing more than excitement stirred
up by your sustained focus on
the
outrageous idea that you are capable
of making major improvements in your
medical practice and income.

You must understand that there’s a
right way and a wrong way to run
your
medical business.
Unfortunately, most doctors don’t
really know how to run
their own
medical business with the maximum
efficiency and profitability that
most successful businesses already
know about.

Doctors aren’t taught what they need
to know about business principles
and marketing strategies. The
results of that fact are relevant to
the following
issue. Reports have
been made that indicate most doctors
leave at least a
million dollars on
the table during their medical
practice years without recognizing
it.

Structuring you medical practice to
provide you with financial
independence
over the long haul is a
worthy goal. The effort requires
both persistent efforts
and the
business knowledge to
make it
happen.

Some food
for thought
about
matching
risk to
gain...

·
How could any doctor in private
medical practice expect to maximize
his business profitability without
having foundational business
knowledge?

·
How can any doctor in medical
practice set aside the time to learn
business principles without
compromising their medical practice
income significantly?

·
When the need arrives for doctors to
save their practice from financial
failure, they are already too
financially strapped to pay an
expert to
help them. Do it yourself?

·
If you are not a risk-taker, how
would you ever expect to reach your
maximal professional capabilities
without
taking risks?

·
How much time, effort, and money are
you willing to spend on educating
yourself in business principles,
tactics, and strategies? Would you
be
open to purchasing a business
and
marketing set of manuals that will
enable you to do
most
of it yourself?

Comment

Medical schools have no intention of
providing even basic education about
business and marketing to students.
College premed students continue to
suffer from the lack of any stimulus
to take business courses during
college. What you have left in
medical practice is learning by
trial and error.

This incredible defect in the
education of doctors is a setup for
medical practice financial failure
in any sense of the word. That is
exactly why so many private medical
practices are now failing and
forcing doctors to seek other
careers and business opportunities.

Those doctors comfortably snuggled
under the wing of an HMO or hospital
employment should be worried as
well. Total control over how you
practice medicine and the constant
possibility of being terminated if
you resist the hierarchy is even
more brutal. I’ve experienced both.

The one undeniable and most critical
benefit offered by a formal business
education is that a doctor is able
to work less and earn more
than they ever
could otherwise.

Knowing what I now know about
risk-taking, business success, and
the potential for profitable
careers, I am convinced that any
physician or other professional
healthcare provider that is failing
financially in their professional
situation
would be far better off to
convert to a business operation.

One
that
they
create
for
themselves
outside
of
the
medical
profession,
rather
than
continue
trying
to
succeed
within
the
medical
profession.
There
are
many
valid
reasons
to
seriously
consider this.

Some other distinguishing advantages
of using business knowledge to
propel your medical practice machine
are...

·
Practice burn-out is almost a
non-issue.

·
Doctor frustration is reduced by 10
fold.

·
Doctor’s can earn enough to afford
to improve their skills and
knowledge at any time they choose.

·
Financial freedom is no longer a
pipe-dream, if the right
tools are
used.

·
Doctor’s are able to alter their
medical practices to meet
economic
or personal choices with very little
loss of income.

·
Practice management requires
considerably less time and effort.

·
Employees are more loyal and remain
longer in the job when a
practice is
run by effective business
procedures.

·
Practice income can be move up and
down by increasing or
ecreasing the marketing efforts.

If you scrutinize these carefully,
you will understand that every one
of these advantages are never
available to those in employed
positions or in private medical
practices without incorporating
formal business knowledge into
their
core framework.

“If a businessman invested one hour
every day doing nothing but
thinking, brainstorming, creating
new and better ways to be of greater
and more valued service to his
customers, money problems would melt
away.”
---Earl Nightingale

Article #31-A

ARTICLE---DAN KENNEDYMARCH ARTICLE

"The Secret of
Getting Referrals"

There
has never been any argument in
advertising circles that the most
effective business advertising is
word-of-mouth advertising.

That's
why direct selling is so dramatically
successful as a method of marketing
every imaginable product and service,
and why direct selling is such a great
business in which to be. As a direct
salesperson conversationally telling
another person why you like a particular
product, you are much more convincing
advertisement than any TV commercial or
magazine ad.

The
tremendous persuasiveness of your
personal endorsement of a product is
what word-of-mouth advertising is all
about. Much to the chagrin of
professional ad agencies, such
word-of-mouth advertising cannot be
purchased. But you, as a direct
salesperson, can put this special type
of advertising power to work
for your
business.

Because
you are fortunate to be on friendly,
personal terms with your
customers, you
can enlist their aid in promoting your
services. You can actually turn your
present customers into a personal
advertising department. All you
need to
do is master the right way to ask
for
their help.

Develop Personal Relations

If you
learn how to properly ask for their
help, your customers will
enthusiastically go to work advertising
your business. This will help promote
your services, lead you to scores of new
services, and give you all the valuable
benefits of word-of-mouth advertising.
There are two types...

1.The customer actually
becomes an
advertising agent and tells
others about
you and the service you provide.

2.The customer gives
you referrals
to people who may be good prospects and
allows you to use their name as an
endorsement.

Either type can be
extremely valuable in
multiplying your
patient list.

Avoid Pressure

The most
important thing to remember is that this
kind of help cannot be bought from your customers. It must never seem like you
are offering a bribe in
exchange for a
list of names. As a rule, people will
not "sell" their friends to
you.
Offering an "inducement" also might
raise doubts about the quality of
your
services. If they are as good as you say
they are, why should you bribe people
for their recommendations?

Remember
two very important things about human
nature: first, people usually enjoy
telling others about products they try
and like. Second, people like to be
appreciated. One way they get
appreciated is by being helpful to
others.

In
short, offer an incentive for help
without appearing to be paying for it.

Show Appreciation

In this
way, you're thanking the person, not
bribing them. They'll be pleased, won't
feel guilty, and will be more willing
the next time you ask.

The next
time you call on that customer you
should remember to again thank them for
their help. Report to them on the
reactions of the prospects they
suggested. Let the person you know you
did call on them, that Mrs. Jones did
become a customer and purchased such and
such, and that Mrs. Walters was
interested but wished to purchase at a
later date.

In many
cases, after reporting these results,
you can obtain a couple of
additional
prospects
from them.

Prospects are the lifeblood of your
business. Your greatest asset in direct
sales
is your inventory of
prospective new
customers. And there
is no better way to
maintain that
inventory, converting
prospects to
customers, than by
using the power of
word-of-mouth
advertising... with
recommendations from
your present,
satisfied customers.
Put this power to work
now and watch your
profits and your list
of patients
multiply.

DAN S. KENNEDYis a serial, multi-millionaire
entrepreneur; highly paid and sought
after marketing and business strategist;
advisor to countless first-generation,
from-scratch multi-millionaire and
7-figure income entrepreneurs and
professionals; and, in his personal
practice, one of the very highest paid
direct-response copywriters in America.
As a speaker, he has delivered over
2,000 compensated presentations,
appearing repeatedly on programs with
the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons
(KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields
Cookies), and many other
celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S.
Presidents and other world leaders, and
other leading business speakers like Zig
Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins,
often addressing audiences of 1,000 to
10,000 and up. His popular books have
been favorably recognized by Forbes,
Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur
Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER,
one of the business newsletters
published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy
Insider's Circle, is the largest paid
subscription newsletter in its genre in
the world.
https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/newmifge/drgraham